Mid-Level Backend Engineer

About us ReturnX is the team behind Dripcel the email and SMS marketing platform sending millions of marketing comms every month on behalf of some of South Africa's biggest brands. We help marketers turn their owned channels into their highest-ROI revenue driver.

The wider company is bigger, but the dev team is deliberately small: three engineers today, and you'd be the fourth. The role We're hiring a mid-level engineer to help us build and ship the backend of Dripcel.

You'll own meaningful pieces of the platform end-to-end - from schema and API design through to deployment - and work closely with a small, senior team where your code gets in front of customers quickly. This is a hands-on IC role.

Expect to spend most of your time writing TypeScript on the backend, designing for scale (we're moving a lot of messages), and shipping things that move the needle for marketers running real campaigns.

We're an AI-first team This isn't a buzzword for us - it shapes both what we build and how we build it. In the product: AI agents are core to Dripcel, not a side feature.

They draft campaigns, personalize at the individual level, segment audiences from natural language, and optimize sends in flight. We're betting that the next generation of marketing tooling looks fundamentally different from the last, and we want engineers who want to build that.

In our workflow: We use Claude Code, Cursor, and agentic dev tooling daily. We expect you to as well. Engineers who lean into these tools ship 3–5× more here than those who don't, and we hire and reward accordingly.

If you're skeptical of AI-assisted development, this isn't the right team for you. If you're already using it well - or hungry to get better at it - you'll fit right in.

What you'll do Design, build, and maintain backend services powering Dripcel's email and SMS sending, segmentation, and campaign infrastructure Integrate AI agents into product workflows - helping customers draft, personalize, segment, and optimize campaigns Own features end-to-end: scoping, implementation, testing, deployment, iteration Contribute to technical direction, code quality, and engineering culture Jump into the frontend when the work calls for it What we're looking for Must have: 3+ years of professional software engineering experience Strong TypeScript - you understand the type system, not just the syntax Track record of shipping and operating production backend systems Hands-on experience building with AI agents (LLM APIs, tool use, multi-step workflows) - not just prompting a chatbot Daily, fluent use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) in your own workflow Comfort owning work end-to-end Strongly preferred: Experience in a fast-moving product team where you've had real ownership Comfort with high-volume / high-throughput systems Nice to have: Svelte / SvelteKit experience - this is our frontend stack, and we love engineers who can dip in AWS experience (Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, SES, or similar) Background in MarTech, messaging infrastructure, or other high-volume transactional systems Familiarity with email deliverability or SMS compliance How we work: Fully remote Engineering team of three, reporting to our Lead Developer Slack for day-to-day communication We run on quarterly OKRs - clear objectives, measurable key results, no busywork dressed up as metrics Small PRs, frequent deploys, and a bias toward simplicity over cleverness AI-augmented from end to end - from how we write code to how we plan, review, and ship Why ReturnX Real scale, real customers.

You're not building toys. Dripcel sends millions of messages a month for some of SA's biggest brands. What you ship gets used the same week. Senior team, no middle layer. You report to the Lead Developer and you'll work directly with the people making product decisions.

No skip-levels, no political layer to navigate. AI-first, for real. Most teams claim this. We actually structure our workflow around it - and we'll back you with the tools, time, and budget to get fluent fast if you aren't already. Paid for outcomes, not activity.

Quarterly bonuses tied to OKR delivery, plus monthly performance incentives. We'd rather reward shipped impact than hours logged or tickets closed. Medical aid with gap cover for all permanent employees. Fully remote, async-friendly. We don